UFC 154's Steven Siler still a work in progress – as long as he can sleep in

Siler (21-9 MMA, 3-0 UFC) on Saturday fight Darren Elkins (14-2 MMA, 4-1 UFC) at UFC 154. Both featherweights have three-fight win streaks. The winner may very well earn the right to fight an opponent with a bigger name.

No disrespect, but not Olly Bradstreet – Siler has overcome that hurdle in his career. After being thrice submitted by the fighter, who fought on the local circuit in Siler’s adopted hometown of Odgen, Utah, he won a fourth bout by first-round guillotine choke.

Were it not for the stern talking-to he got from Jorge Lopez, a future UFC welterweight, he might never have gotten to that point, much less fought inside the octagon.

Siler vs. Elkins serves as the first fight of Saturday’s event, which takes place at Bell Centre in Montreal. The bout streams on Facebook in advance of prelims on FX and the pay-per-view main card.

After a third loss Bradstreet in 2007, Lopez told him he needed to start training. Despite 12 fights on his resume, Siler had never set foot inside an MMA gym. He’d fought several times in school and loved the feeling. Sometimes he and Lopez would strap on MMA gloves and fight at parties. Lopez, who had started training after a trip to Brazil, would beat the crap out of him.

But the drive to drag himself into a dojo to actually learn how to fight wasn’t there. It was hard for Siler to get out of bed in the first place. Going to bed every night at 3 a.m., he missed so many days of high school that his mom stopped excusing him and he got community service.

“I’d have intentions of going to school, but then I’d look up at the clock and see it’s noon or 1,” he told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “Well, what’s the point of going if there’s only a little bit of school left?”

In the wee hours, Siler would obsess over sports. He followed everything – football, baseball, basketball, golf, you name it. He started following MMA after Lopez came back from Brazil with a heap of fight DVDs. The two would play the old UFC and PRIDE video games for hours. But the idea of getting up for a morning run or shadowboxing was an unwanted assault on his sleep schedule.

For what he lacked in motivation, Siler excelled in cutting corners. He found a buddy to write off his community service hours without paying for them and found another to do his makeup assignments. He graduated high school.

And without much forethought, he shoved his way into the cage. A TV station aired a local MMA event on Saturday nights, and he thought it would be a cool way to get on TV. He won his first fight, and he fell in love.

Then he met Bradstreet. It was hard to avoid him – there weren’t many featherweights on the local circuit. They would fight once a year for four years. He fought another local, 145-pound fighter Kawaika Kauwe, three times, going 1-2.

At 5-7 after his third failed attempt to beat Bradstreet, though, Siler’s lackadaisical attitude was hurting him. It was also making him look pretty silly, losing to one person three times in a row. Lopez told him he was disrespecting the sport. He needed to take this thing seriously.

“At that time, I couldn’t even dream of being in the UFC or making a life through fighting,” said Siler, who at the time worked at a private contracting company servicing the aviation industry. “He was like a little brother to me. Bigger than me, but I respected his opinion. I took him up on it, and me and him went to jiu-jitsu school.”

Training suited Siler. He fought two weeks after his rubber match of sorts and submitted his opponent in the second round. Fourteen months later, he submitted Bradstreet. In a two-year stretch, he put together a nine-fight win streak before running into future UFC title challenger Chad Mendes.

Building a 4-1 ledger after that setback, Siler auditioned for and won a spot on “The Ultimate Fighter 14.” He made it to the quarterfinals of the reality show tournament before getting knocked out by eventual winner Diego Brandao.

Since the show, Siler has defeated Josh Clopton, Cole Miller and Joey Gambino. He’s a full-fledged UFC fighter. His love for the sport hasn’t faded, but now he has the moves to back it up.

“I’ve got a lot of submission victories, but I love standing up and catching on to a lot of the maneuvers,” he said. “I never thought about kneeing anyone in the face, and then I fought Clopton and I figured I could do it. I think I’m catching on to things rather quickly.”

His old foe Bradstreet is now a training partner. Lopez, meanwhile, hasn’t fought since a May loss to “The Ultimate Fighter 7” winner Amir Sadollah.

Siler still doesn’t wake up early. MMA fighters, as he found out, are late risers.

“We don’t train until one in the afternoon,” Siler said with a chuckle.

ALBANY, N.Y. – MMAjunkie is on scene and reporting live from today’s UFC Fight Night 102 event at Times Union Center in Albany, N.Y., which kicks off at 5:45 p.m. ET (2:45 p.m. PT). You can discuss the event here.

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